Architecture and fashion infect each other, often advancing side by side in an increasingly globalized world, increasingly social, increasingly attentive, increasingly aware. It is inevitable and sometimes necessary that these two disciplines meet in a single place and within the same time frame with the aim of spreading, discussing, exhibiting, selling, and presenting to the widest possible audience the objects, thoughts, and ideas.

The model of physical space in which this meeting takes place today is the store, no longer understood as a place merely for purchasing. “Shopping is probably the last form of public activity left,” declares Rem Koolhaas, one of the first to recognize how the discipline of retail is reconfiguring the atmosphere of the city through a process of hybridization.
Today more than ever, the store becomes a place that goes far beyond the function of a commercial space, increasingly taking on an exhibition connotation, in which architecture plays the role of protagonist, treating garments as works of art, enhancing them through the display of selected pieces aimed at capturing the visitor’s attention. And it is precisely in this way that over the last decades we have witnessed the shift of attention from the product to the consumer, thanks to the control of the store space allowed by architectural design.
Our work investigates the relationship between architecture and fashion, particularly by analyzing from a formal and architectural point of view the space of fashion retail and how they have over the years become places with characteristics comparable to those of exhibition spaces.

The first two chapters deal with the history and architectural structure of stores and museums, analyzing for both the form and furniture, materials, light, and atmosphere. Then the last chapter, “Architectural Retail,” examines twenty case studies from the last twenty years, dividing them into five categories based on their characteristics, with the intention of demonstrating how fashion retail is increasingly taking on museum like connotations.